Within the bamboo forest, the wind still rustled.
But the breeze, which should have been refreshing, now struck Qin Feng’s ears as a piercing shriek, as if countless tormented souls were weeping and demanding answers.
Yu Han’s words were like blades forged from Ten Thousand Years Profound Ice. Sentence by sentence, word by word, they laid bare the bloody, ice-cold skeleton of reality before him.
"When Sun Chan Hall cured your illness, when you accepted the Starry Sky Giant Beast Type II Gene Potion, when you accepted the Ten-Complete Hand, why didn’t you refuse then?"
The rhetorical question struck Qin Feng’s heart like a heavy hammer.
He couldn’t refute the logic contained within it—he had enjoyed the Empire’s most elite resources, and those resources themselves represented a form of selection and inequality.
But deep within him, the simple code of ethics—rooted in his home star, the Qin Family, and the lessons taught by the lives of countless comrades-in-arms—was roaring in furious protest.
"This is different."
Qin Feng’s voice was hoarse but exceptionally firm.
He raised his head and looked directly into Yu Han’s eyes, which were as deep as a starry sky and showed not the slightest waver.
"If accepting the Ten-Complete Hand, if accepting any top-tier resource, means paving the way with the lives of innocent compatriots, if it means allowing a traitor to the Empire to slaughter our people, then I would rather have never set foot on the Martial Dao!"
His voice suddenly rose, like a clap of thunder in the quiet bamboo forest. "Back then, when Master Sun cured my affliction, he told me himself that I should walk the Martial Dao to protect the Human Race!
Not so I would accept this Evil Dao of ’nurturing’ geniuses with the lives of our own people!
Master Yu Han, you’re just using sophistry! I want to see Lord Zhou Xiong!
I want to ask him to his face whose order this is!
Is the glory of the Ultramarines Chapter, the glory of the Empire, built on the bones of our own people?!"
Qin Feng’s emotions, like a volcano dormant for ten thousand years, erupted at this moment.
This was a desecration.
A complete and utter desecration of everything he believed in, of the Martial Dao Will he had forged through blood and fire!
"..."
Yu Han fell silent.
He looked at the disciple before him, who was like a raging lion, and at the flame in his eyes—a flame so pure it was piercing, untarnished by time or slaughter. A distant, bitter sense of resonance stirred in his heart.
’Once upon a time, I myself...’
After a long while, Yu Han suppressed the turbulence in his heart. In a tone that was even colder and left no room for argument, he resumed his role as the spokesman for a cruel Order.
"Qin Feng, put away your immature emotions.
You must understand that the Empire spares no effort and no expense in cultivating a genius of your caliber."
He held up a finger and began a precise calculation.
"Let me run the numbers for you."
"If you can kill a demon blessed by Khorne, you’ll gain immense benefits that will allow you to go further in the future. If you become a Black Hole-level master, you could protect all the humans in an entire galaxy, slay countless members of the Alien Race, and indirectly save even more of our people.
And Black Hole-level is only the starting point for a genius like you."
Yu Han’s voice paused, giving Qin Feng space to breathe and think. Then, he threw down the cruelest weight on the scale.
"Meanwhile, by strategically allowing this ’pawn,’ Shi Dang, to run rampant in the Border Star Realm for a short time, the maximum number of direct and indirect deaths, according to precise projections from big data models, will not exceed three million."
"Three million lives, versus a future Guardian God of the Human Race whose starting point is Black Hole-level.
Qin Feng, now you tell me, which carries more weight?"
Yu Han’s gaze was like a knife, stabbing deep into Qin Feng’s soul.
"The Empire, under certain specific circumstances, will personally cultivate—or, you could say, ’free-range’—demons.
And these free-range demons become nourishment for our Warband’s most exceptional geniuses.
Using one controllable demon to spawn one immeasurable hero.
This is one of the timeless, iron-clad laws the Empire has concluded after countless years of bloody War against Chaos and the myriad races.
This is also the true meaning behind the Empire’s border regions—they are a whetstone, a sorting ground, a... vessel for Raising Gu."
Qin Feng fell completely silent.
His tall frame actually trembled slightly at this moment.
Not from fear, but from the immense shock of his worldview collapsing.
His strong mentality, which he had always been proud of, was showing countless cracks in the face of this cold, precise, and seemingly irrefutable "Truth of the Empire."
He could not refute it.
From a perspective of pure reason and maximizing benefit, Yu Han’s logic was sound.
To a vast Empire that measures itself in light-years and star systems, three million was less impactful than a cold number on a battle report.
And the strategic value of a Black Hole-level expert was indeed immeasurable.
But...
After a long silence, Qin Feng spoke with great difficulty, each word seemingly forced from between his teeth, "And what about the ones sacrificed to the Chaos Demon? The ones who make up that number—three million? What about our fellow members of the Human Race?"
"In this cold and cruel Cosmos, we believe, and we must believe—there is only the interest of the Human Race as a whole. The gains and losses of individuals do not exist."
Yu Han’s voice grew even colder, yet within that chill was a nearly imperceptible, deeply buried trace of sorrowful resentment.
It seemed he wasn’t speaking to Qin Feng, but rather declaring something to himself—to a sealed-away past.